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NATURE OF OPENINGS

NATURE OF OPENINGS

Post 392 ⇒ by Gautam Shah →

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An opening is any space or gap within a barrier. An opening is meaningful so far it is in a barrier. The opening could be a ‘puncture’, surrounded by the barrier on all its sides, or a cleavage between two barriers. Openings are also called ports, as across the opening one can ‘board’ a new system. An opening is called a passageway, as this is the only way, one can, transit a territory.

Chaco Canyon Pueblo Bonito doorways

An opening can never be larger or equal to a barrier within which it resides. All physical openings have a finite size. A smaller opening makes a barrier system very evident, whereas a large opening or multiple openings make barriers less effective. Opening systems are also ineffective in transparent, translucent or frequently interrupted (broken or discontinuous) barriers. A room with a lattice wall all around has no need for a window, or a glass cabin has no need for an opaque (solid) door.

Manhattan Bridge Arch and Colonnade

Openings are defined by superlative structures to denote the presence and control the activities occurring through it. The superlative structures over passageways such as Gates, Gateways or Doorways are large in size and very distinctively formed. Formal structures have shutter devices whereas symbolic structures are simple openings. Nominally a passage is a linear entity, and so do the gates have singular passage. Cross junctions of passages require four or more sided gates.

Multiple Openings

The superlative structures function as control Gateways over openings. Such openings’ control the transactions, by way of the size, volume, temporal rate of passage and the qualitative nature of things. The transactions across the openings are of two ways, exit and entry types, and so the controls are also dualistic.

Gates with sensors

Gates with minimal structure

All communication channels have Gateways, from where the traffic gets diverted to appropriate channels and portals where divergent traffic gets ‘routed’. These gateways registersize of individual transactions, time of arrival-departure and source-destination of traffic. But most importantly there are ‘protocols’ that check whether the destined item has reached or not.

Surveillance gates or ports

In buildings openings like Gates, Doors, Windows, Ventilators, Gaps, Cracks, Crevices and Punctures all denote physical entities, but there are innumerable imperceptible points where observance and control occur. The sensors, cameras, readers, etc., are concealed, made minute in size and programmed so that ‘Gates’ structures are not imminent.

Openings in buildings have facilities for allowing sunlight, air, sounds and for framing view of the outside. The openings also create architectural patterns, compositions through scaling and proportioning, endow specific style character, affinities and identities. The openings occur in a barrier system as a connecting threshold or edge between two distinct worlds, but their own presence assumes many different guises. An opening is designed to be a distinct medium investing a nature of relationship between spatial domains.